~ Standing up for Public Education

Monthly Archives: May 2016

Public education “reforms” are forcing the shift to online testing and learning. Clearly, the potential for profit is enormous. The move to all-access devices in the classroom is a largely unproven experiment on our kids. A recent paper by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has found that removing laptops, iPads and other technology from classroom lectures vastly improved student outcomes on tests. It found that the presence of digital devices is distracting, resulting in reduced test scores for both low- and high-performing students. Apparently the organic experience of handwriting notes improves learning.

According to the study, students who use their tablet or computer to take classroom notes may actually be “surfing the Internet, checking email, messaging with friends, or even completing homework for that class or another class. All of these activities could draw a student’s attention away from the class, resulting in a lower understanding of the material.

The findings are all the more interesting because they examine economics students at West Point where there is a student teacher ratio of 18:1.

The Guardian notes: The researchers suggested that removing laptops and iPads from classes was the equivalent of improving the quality of teaching.

The study divided 726 undergraduates randomly into three groups in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 academic years. The control group’s classrooms were “technology-free,” meaning students were not allowed to use laptops or tablets at their desk. Another group was allowed to use computers and other devices, and the third group had restricted access to tablets.

“The results from our randomised experiment suggest that computer devices have a substantial negative effect on academic performance,” the researchers concluded, suggesting that the distraction of an electronic device complete with internet access outweighed their use for note-taking or research during lessons.

The research had an unusual twist: the students involved were studying at the West Point academy in the US, where cadets are ruthlessly ranked by exam results, meaning they were motivated to perform well and may have been more disciplined than typical undergraduates.

But even for the cream of the US army’s future crop, the lure of the digital world appears to have been too much, and exam performance after a full course of studying economics was lower among those in classes allowed to use devices.

We really have to wonder about the long term effects of a level of screen time where “life has no on/off switch.” Psychology Today recently explored the impact of screen time on the young that has far reaching life-time consequences:

The brain’s frontal lobe is the area responsible for decoding and comprehending social interactions. It is in this corner of the mind that we empathize with others, take in nonverbal cues while talking to friends and colleagues, and learn how to read the hundreds of unspoken signs—facial expression, tone of voice, and more—that add color and depth to real-world relationships.

So how and when does the brain’s frontal lobe develop? Not surprisingly, the most crucial stage is in early childhood, during that same critical period, and it’s dependent on authentic human interactions. So if your young child is spending all of his time in front of an iPad instead of chatting and playing with teachers and other children, his empathetic abilities—the near-instinctive way you and I can read situations and get a feel for other people—will be dulled, possibly for good.

We live in a world where pre-teens and high schools students are obsessed with social media, texting and the insane notion that doing all of these things while driving or some other equally important activity is “multi-tasking.” Students think nothing of studying for a test while impulsively checking for updates, messages and chat threads in an obsessive need to “know.”

Is it any wonder that even ultra motivated West Point Cadets are distracted by taking notes on laptops and tablets? Parents and educators take heed. Zero proof exists that device-driven learning and testing is high quality, safe or effective. While the philanthro-tech crowd sees little value in the high-touch act of hand writing class notes, we must never forget that their point of view comes with an enormous pay day for them at our children’s expense.

Florida’s approach to improving public education is getting serious scrutiny on several fronts.

Now is the time to take a good look at whether the changes we’ve endured — mass privatization, real-dollar funding decreases, high-stakes testing, and loss of local school board authority — gets us closer to carrying out our constitutional duty to our children.

A public-education-funding lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of 17 years of GOP-led school reforms ended in Leon County Circuit Court on April 8. Citizens for Strong Schools, Fund Education Now, and other plaintiffs have alleged that Florida is violating the State Constitution by failing to adequately fund a “high quality” public education for students.

These types of policies spurred a national, grassroots public school advocacy organization to give Florida an “F” in its 50-state report card in February. And this month, the Tampa Bay Times collected a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of how one county abandoned efforts to desegregate its schools with disastrous consequences. Would that it were truly for only one county.

Jeb-Bush-brand reformers and grassroots public education advocates alike, along with circuit court Judge George Reynolds, should pay close attention to the stories. The big takeaway is that simply because a court declares a school district “unitary” for purposes of desegregation, doesn’t mean the county won’t revert to its segregated, inequitable ways once court supervision is lifted.

A civil rights study performed in Florida just a few years after some counties were awarded “unitary status” by the courts reports a median statewide segregation index of 47. That number, the study explains, represents the percentage of students who would need to change schools to make those schools reflect the district’s black and white population ratios.

“The reality is that we are dancing dangerously close to resegregation,” activist Kathleen Oropeza said. She contends that Florida’s reform policies, especially the push for charter schools, have made things worse, not better, for school equity. School inequity, in many Florida cities, is still very closely related to racial segregation.

Oropeza, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and co-founder of Fund Education Now, testified earlier this month. Research backs her up.

Professors at Duke University released a study of North Carolina schools last year that concluded that the charter movement effectively re-segregated that state’s schools. Jeff Guo of the Washington Post reports that North Carolina’s charter schools tend to be overwhelmingly black or overwhelmingly white. That trend has been seen in Florida charter schools, and nationally.

“Charter schools are not required to take all students,” Oropeza says. “They can be selective in subtle ways. If you sign a contract and don’t pay through volunteer hours or financial donations, your contract might not get renewed.

“They’re creating separate, unequal seats for every child, hoping that the free market is somehow creating a solution.”

Free market solutions are not to be found in Jacksonville’s charter schools, which fared worse than Jacksonville’s public schools in an analysis of provisional 2016 grades. Charter schools, like public schools, run the gamut with school grades. The biggest correlate to academic performance remains, tragically, a student’s zip code.

“Charter schools were originally intended to be places of innovations, schools that bring something that the community doesn’t already have,” Oropeza said. “Instead of bringing innovation, they’re becoming factories of replication, draining billions of dollars away from district public school classrooms.

“When you read education reform legislation, at the heart of almost every bill there is a vendor built into the bill. It speaks volumes about what education legislation is really about in Florida.”

Money.

Meanwhile, public school inequities persist — and economic disparities still overlap race too much in our state. Jacksonville, for example, is home to several under-enrolled, underperforming public elementary schools in predominantly black neighborhoods. Superintendent Nikolai Vitti has proposed several boundary and program changes – including magnet programs — at some of these schools to keep them open. And that has neighborhood advocates and Congresswoman Corrine Brown understandably upset: magnet schools have failed miserably to produce school equity.

The civil rights report gives us a big clue as to what is really at the heart of our public school problems. It’s not teachers, or teacher unions. It’s not a question of whether privatization creates better outcomes for poor kids. We’ve seen that it doesn’t.

Pretending that the “market” will repair decades of entrenched socio-economic, geographic and demographic trends is naïve. The truth is, we’ve barely gone halfway to truly address the persistent inequities in our schools, despite the fact that we know money, well spent,makes a positive difference.

The “Failure Factories” article rightly credits Duval County with raising $50 million to improve teaching quality in our struggling schools.

Florida doesn’t know what it takes to cure its school inequity problem because we’ve never approached an education budget using a needs-based model. Judge Reynolds has the opportunity to change all of that with an order declaring the Legislature’s reform actions unconstitutional.

Julie Delegal, a University of Florida alumna, is a contributor for Folio Weekly, Jacksonville’s alternative weekly, and writes for the family business, Delegal Law Offices. She lives in Jacksonville, Florida. Read the original April 27, 2016 post in Context Florida.

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